Susanna GREGORY - Mystery in the Minster

‘No, thank you,’ replied Michael. ‘I have Liber de Coquina , a text famous for its tasty recipes, and I have just discovered one for chicken with dates. I am in the process of memorising it.’

‘Why?’ asked Bartholomew, who had been handed a manuscript on French pastries. A quick inspection of the shelf told him that Multone’s entire collection comprised books about food and how to prepare it. ‘I doubt it will transpire to be edible if you ask Michaelhouse to make it.’

‘God’s teeth!’ breathed Langelee, gazing in astonishment at the tome he had been given. ‘Did you know it is possible to eat cuckoo? With cherries?’

‘I think you will find cuniculus is rabbit, Master,’ said Bartholomew, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Cuckoo would be cuculus .’

Langelee was spared from further embarrassment when Oustwyk opened the door to admit two nuns in Benedictine habits. The younger, a novice, was pretty, with a heart-shaped face. There was a book under her arm, and sharp intelligence in her blue eyes.

Her companion could not have been more different. She had the baggy skin of a woman who had lived life to the full, and her worldly eyes said she was still far from finished with it. A ruby pendant took the place of the more usual pectoral cross, and her fingers were so cluttered with rings that Bartholomew wondered whether they were functional. The tendrils of hair that had been allowed to escape from under her wimple were dyed a rather startling orange.

‘Alice!’ exclaimed Langelee, regarding her in delight. ‘You are still here! I thought you would have been deposed by now … I mean, I assumed you would have moved to greener pastures.’

‘Ralph,’ purred Alice. ‘I did not think we would meet again. And I have missed you.’

Langelee treated her to a smacking kiss, while the novice gazed at the spectacle and Radeford gazed at the novice. Uneasily, Bartholomew saw the lawyer had been instantly smitten, and hoped it would not cause trouble – it was one thing for the Master to flirt with an old friend, but another altogether for a Michaelhouse man to fall for a woman intended for the Church.

‘Here!’ objected Oustwyk, hurrying forward to prise Alice and Langelee apart. ‘No nonsense in the Abbot’s solar, if you please. He will disapprove. And you do not want to be fined for licentious behaviour again, Prioress.’

‘No,’ sighed Alice. ‘I still owe the last one he levied. Of course, it was wholly unjust. It is hardly my fault that the vicars-choral like to visit me of an evening. They come for the music, you understand. As you may recall, Ralph, I play the lute.’

Langelee laughed, leaving Bartholomew with the distinct impression that ‘playing the lute’ was a euphemism for something else entirely. Alice’s companion was not amused, however.

‘Your music sees you in far too much trouble, Mother,’ she said worriedly. ‘Perhaps it is time you abandoned it, and took up something more suited to your age. Such as darning.’

‘I am not your mother, Isabella,’ snapped Alice, as Langelee’s eyes fastened speculatively on the younger woman. ‘How many more times must I tell you not to call me that?’

‘You are to all intents and purposes,’ countered Isabella. ‘You promised my uncle that you would act in loco parentis to me after he died.’

‘Isabella?’ asked Langelee, peering at the young woman’s face. ‘Good Lord! I did not recognise you! Little Isabella – Zouche’s niece! And you want to become a nun?’

‘I do,’ replied Isabella, although Alice made a gesture behind her back that said this was by no means decided. ‘How else shall I be able to study theology? It is my greatest passion, and if I had been born a man, I would be enrolled in your University by now.’

Langelee seemed unsure how to respond to this claim, never having felt anything remotely approaching passion for an academic discipline. ‘What about Helen?’ he asked rather lamely. ‘I believe she was another of Zouche’s nieces. Was she your sister, too? I cannot recall.’

‘Cousin,’ replied Isabella. ‘She made an excellent marriage to Sir Richard Vavasours, so she is Lady Helen now. Unfortunately, he died on a pilgrimage to Canterbury four years ago.’

Remembering his manners, Langelee introduced his colleagues, although Radeford became uncharacteristically tongue-tied when it was his turn to be presented. Bartholomew supposed Isabella was pretty, but he was in love with a woman named Matilde, and the novice paled in comparison to her. The fact that he had not seen or heard of Matilde in almost three years had done nothing to diminish his affection, or to soothe the heartache her disappearance had caused him.

‘Minding Isabella has not been easy,’ said Alice to Langelee, speaking as if the younger woman could not hear. ‘She will insist on accusing high-ranking officials of being greedy and corrupt.’

‘Because they are,’ asserted Isabella. ‘It would be disingenuous to say otherwise.’

‘Worse yet,’ Alice went on, ‘she had to answer to Archbishop Thoresby for apostasy.’

‘Apostasy?’ echoed Langelee, startled. ‘I thought she just said she wanted to be a nun.’

‘I do,’ declared Isabella. ‘But that does not mean I must meekly accept everything I read. And St Augustine’s concept of original sin is wrong. He says here that–’

‘Not now,’ said Alice wearily, as the novice began to fumble in the book she was carrying.

Langelee grinned in a manner that was distinctly predatory. ‘I shall discuss theology with you later, Isabella. As a philosopher, I am more than qualified to say whether or not you are an apostate.’

‘You will not have time, Master,’ said Radeford, finding his voice at last. He smiled shyly at Isabella. ‘He is not very interested in religious debates, anyway. But I am. Very interested.’

While Radeford proceeded to ingratiate himself with Isabella, and his colleagues listened with raised eyebrows – he had never expressed a liking for the ‘queen of sciences’ before – Abbot Multone bustled in, all flapping habit and bushy white hair.

‘My apologies,’ he said breathlessly. ‘We are always busy in the mornings, because of obits – masses we are obliged to say for the souls of the dead.’

‘We know what obits are,’ said Michael, resenting the implication that he was some provincial bumpkin who did not know the ways of the Church. ‘Michaelhouse performs dozens of them each year, for the souls of our founder, our benefactors and their families.’

‘Well, we have thousands,’ countered Multone rather competitively. ‘Which means every priest in York must recite at least two a day.’

‘We charge for ours,’ interjected Oustwyk smugly. ‘People give us a house or a bit of land, and the rent pays for our devotions. And as we get to keep anything left over, we do not mind spending a few moments on our knees each day. It is very lucrative.’

Michael started to make a tart observation about avarice, but Multone’s eyebrows had drawn together in a frown when he saw Alice and Isabella, and he cut across him rather abruptly.

‘What are you two doing here?’ he demanded ungraciously. ‘I was hoping to speak to my visitors in private.’

‘I told them to wait outside until you were ready,’ said Oustwyk, when his Abbot turned to glare accusingly at him. ‘But Prioress Alice refused, on the grounds that it is raining.’

‘Well, it is raining,’ averred Alice. ‘And you said you wanted to question Isabella about what she announced in the meat-market yesterday. You asked her to select a play to be performed there,’ she added, when Multone regarded her blankly.

‘Oh, yes.’ Multone brought a steely gaze to bear on the novice. ‘I thought the exercise would keep your mind off theology, which is better left to men. But the title of the drama you have picked has the entire city in an uproar of anticipation. What were you thinking, to choose such a piece?’